Winery
The
construction of our winery was completed just in time (only five days
before!) for the 2004 harvest. The progress and various problems encountered
can be found in detail in our online diary (between
March and September 2004). A plan view of the interior is reproduced
below;
The numbers on each of the vats indicate the number of hectolitres (1 hectolitre = 100 litres) that each will hold.
Construction
Work began in April 2004. The building is built with highly insulated bricks to ensure that there is very little temperature variation. The roof is also heavily insulated. Below is a cross-section of one of the bricks.
Here we have pictures of the stages of construction.Click each to see a bigger version.
Equipment
We
believe that the key to making good wine is first of all to manage the
vineyard properly but the methods and equipment in the winery are also
extremely important. We decided to buy low capacity fermenting vessels
(made of stainless steel) to enable us to vinify the different parcels
of our vineyard separately - allowing us to create optimal blends after
fermentation. We also have equipment that enables us to cool or warm
the vats thus controlling the fermentation temperature. This is particularly
important for the white wines as resting the grapes on their skins in
cool conditions before fermentation extracts the maximum amount of aromatic
compounds.
Other equipment is also needed, including;
- Crusher/destemmer - gently crushes the grapes and removes the woody stems
- Press - extracts the juice from the skins
- Pumps - two types, one for the grapes and skins and another for just liquid
